God on the Move
“Frieda appeared today! She was out walking along the fence in our backyard!” That was the brief email message I got from my mother under the subject line “A Springtime Report.”
Frieda is a large box turtle with a distinctive white lower jaw that has been living in my parents’ backyard for almost 50 years. As best we can recall, we found her in 1970 on a Sunday morning on our way to or from church. She was crossing Greenville Avenue near Campbell Road when it still was just a two-lane blacktop. We originally named her Fred because, well, we didn’t know anything about turtle gender. We didn’t discover that he was a she until other turtles were found and put in the yard with her.
Frieda is now the queen of a herd of turtles that has surpassed 30 and shrunk down to as few as five depending on the weather, scavenging raccoons and escapes under the fence. A lot of the loss is due to youth and inexperience. The turtles dig down into the ground and hibernate in the winter, but the younger ones may venture out too early and risk getting zapped by a late freeze. Not Frieda. She knows when it’s time to come up and walk the fence line.
When I read my mother’s email, I immediately thought of C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, where the clarion call for the coming of a better day is, “Aslan is on the move.” The Pevensie children hear it long before they know who Aslan is, but the other creatures and characters know that Aslan is the great lion who rules all and will change everything. And readers of the book come to understand that Aslan is Lewis’ representation of Christ.
So, a report that “Frieda is on the move” is a sure sign that spring is finally here and better days are coming. But more than that, it’s a reminder that nature continues to cycle in the glorious, refreshing manner that God planned from the beginning.
Here’s wishing you a springtime in which you feel the spirit of God on the move!